I have a good camera (a Canon 350D) with a decent set of lenses and a good flashlight. When I go on vacation, I take it all with me. But I also do that when visiting a restaurant, or when doing some other trip or going to an event. It’s a heavy backpack to carry around, and most of the time, it is a pain in the ass. So I decided to buy a compact-camera on the side, and this afternoon I bought the Canon Powershot G9. It’s very sturdy (all metal body), it has all features an SLR has, it creates very good (IQ-wise) images. But a lot of compacts do that. I decided to buy the G9 mainly because it can use my Canon Speedlite, and because it uses the same batteries as the 350D.
Since I bought it, I already shot over a 100 pictures and some movies. The movie quality is very good, but if you really want to make movies, nothing compares to a real videocamera. The pictures are impressive, but it takes some getting used to the slower reaction time of the camera when pressing the shutterrelease. That’s the main reason I sold my first digital camera and bought a DSLR (my previous camera, a Fuji S2 Pro). But compacts have come a long way, and with this camera its not annoying, it’s just that I need to remember it’s not an SLR when using it, mainly because of the focussing speed. There is some time between point and shoot.
Also, I bought a 50mm (f/1.8) lens for the 350D. To weighten the backpack even further…